Department of History

History on Film: Slavery & the African Diaspora from a Global Perspective (2nd series)

Our film series and panel discussions with the filmmakers propose to make visible people of African descent in the world. By including films from the Indian Ocean World (Sri Lanka) and Africa (Mali and Benin), we aim to throw light on slavery in the African continent as well as its eastwards dimension. Slavery has all too often been studied in isolation from Africa. The focus has mainly been on the North Atlantic World. Indeed, the cultural dimension of Diasporas has long been observed in the North Atlantic World, but it has received only scant attention within the context of emancipated slave communities elsewhere.

The films and the discussion panels aim to question the biases in studying slavery. They examine the processes of integration and assimilation in the different African Diasporas, and how these communities produce diasporic cultural spheres which today constitute memoryscapes of the history of slavery.